[Elecraft] I Hate Winding Toroids

Sun Sep 7 19:13:01 2003

I've tried many of the same ideas to strip and tin my toroids. What I found
is the easiest for me is to lay the lead to be stripped on the edge of a
piece of plywood (it is the edge of the piece I use to protect my desktop)
and use emery boards drawing away from me and pressing down on the wire lead
and plywood. I rotate the toroids/wire and it cleans up nicely. I follow
that with solder blob to catch any remains of enamel and to tin the wire. It
doesn't require too much effort, is reasonably fast and does a good job. I
still don't call it fun though.

John n1sjz

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of John Smith
> Sent: Sunday, September 07, 2003 6:42 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [Elecraft] I Hate Winding Toroids
>
>
> Tim,
>
> I didn't have any toroid winding experience until my very recent
> build of my
> K2.  I've read a lot of information on techniques, methods and
> opinions.  I
> personally didn't find the winding part to be an issue at all but
> I can see
> the advantage of your dowel tool to get the wire wrapped tightly to the
> toroid without having to apply a death grip on it with two fingers.  The
> difficult part for me was removing the enamel from the wire.  I initially
> tried the solder blob method.  After trying this, I thought they must be
> kidding! - this is a mess.  I then tried the torch method
> (lighter) on extra
> wire to practice on.  I obtained about the same results.  Using the torch
> method leaves residue that you have to take off with an abrasive
> paper.  In
> addition, the enamal appears to be somewhat flammable and it is not really
> possible to control how much of it burns off.  This can cause you to take
> off too much and too close to the toroid and may cause a short on
> a bi-filar
> type winding.
>
> All though probably not recommended by most, I found that scraping the
> enamel off and then tinning the leads worked much better for me.
> The trick
> here is to ensure that you lay the wire down on a flat hard surface and
> position the knife blade at a 90 degree angle to the wire.  Apply
> very light
> pressure while scaping and presto - comes right off without the heat and
> inhaling enamel fumes.  You have to rotate the wire and scrape
> each side to
> obtain a clean wire.  Do not try to scrap the enamel off with the blade at
> an angle like you would if you were shaving the bark off of a stick.  The
> blade will snag on the wire and you will knick the wire causing it to
> break - sooner or later.  Good luck on your windings...
>
> John - KI7V